Legge G E, Gu Y C, Luebker A
Percept Psychophys. 1989 Oct;46(4):365-74. doi: 10.3758/bf03204990.
The term graphical perception refers to the part played by visual perception in analyzing graphs. Computer graphics have stimulated interest in the perceptual pros and cons of different formats for displaying data. One way of evaluating the effectiveness of a display is to measure the efficiency (as defined by signal-detection theory) with which an observer extracts information from the graph. We measured observers' efficiencies in detecting differences in the means or variances of pairs of data sets sampled from Gaussian distributions. Sample size ranged from 1 to 20 for viewing times of 0.3 or 1 sec. The samples were displayed in three formats: numerical tables, scatterplots, and luminance-coded displays. Efficiency was highest for the scatterplots (approximately equal to 60% for both means and variances) and was only weakly dependent on sample size and exposure time. The pattern of results suggests parallel perceptual computation in which a constant proportion of the available information is used. Efficiency was lowest for the numerical tables and depended more strongly on sample size and viewing time. The results suggest serial processing in which a fixed amount of the available information is processed in a given time.
“图形感知”一词指的是视觉感知在分析图表中所起的作用。计算机图形学激发了人们对不同数据显示格式在感知方面优缺点的兴趣。评估一种显示方式有效性的一种方法是测量观察者从图表中提取信息的效率（如信号检测理论所定义）。我们测量了观察者在检测从高斯分布中采样的成对数据集的均值或方差差异时的效率。样本大小在1到20之间，观察时间为0.3秒或1秒。样本以三种格式显示：数值表、散点图和亮度编码显示。散点图的效率最高（均值和方差的效率均约为60%），且仅微弱地依赖于样本大小和曝光时间。结果模式表明存在并行感知计算，即使用的可用信息比例恒定。数值表的效率最低，且更强烈地依赖于样本大小和观察时间。结果表明存在串行处理，即在给定时间内处理固定量的可用信息。
